In an intense and sometimes emotional speech, former Vice President Al Gore called on the nations at the Copenhagen climate summit to speed up their negotiation process by five months. Since a binding agreement to reduce greenhouse gases is not likely to come from this week’s meeting, Gore suggested they make one in July 2010 in Mexico City. That meeting is currently scheduled for the end of next year.

[snip]

“I have reason to believe the Mexican government would be willing to undertake the enormous amount of work that would be involved to move the date of the next meeting to the middle of the summer,” said Gore.

He also said it would be unwise to try to finalize binding carbon targets while distracted by America’s midterm elections next November.

Gore went on to parrot Gov. Schwarzenegger by suggesting that the UN “convene a global climate summit in California that would be specifically designed for cities and states and other sub-national governments.”

In two days we’ve had two high-profile and outspoken climate alarmists suggest that Copenhagen will NOT reach agreement, that we should “think globally and act locally,” and that the US needs to lead the way in this fight against the destruction of mankind…so long (in Gore’s case) as we do so well before an election cycle that already has many Democrats shaking in their boots. An agreement in Mexico just might be the cover some of them need to get re-elected.

Connie Hedegaard’s surprise resignation as president of the U.N. climate talks highlighted the mayhem inside and outside the conference site today as senior-level negotiations among the 193 nations gathered here formally began.

At the beginning of today’s plenary session, Hedegaard formally stepped down and said Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen — her replacement — is more appropriate to lead the formal talks now that they have ascended to the senior level and many heads of state have begun arriving. But privately, officials here said that she was forced to step down because of questions over the strength of her leadership and close ties to the U.S. and other developed nations.

Her resignation comes after poor nations — led by those in Africa — on Monday protested her decision to mix together two separate negotiations aimed at extending the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and coming up with a new separate treaty. Major developing nations like China, India, South Africa and Brazil also today protested an expected Danish text coming out that they said would favor the U.S. and other developed nations and trump their concerns over financing, emission reductions and other key issues.

I think it’s safe to say the Summit is falling apart, mostly because the expectations were too high to begin with. The world is, collectively, suffering a dramatic economic decline and is going to be hard-pressed to volunteer billions of it’s already receding dollars or euros or yen on countries that will never be able to repay it or in any way help defray the costs of such an economically debilitating undertaking.

[cross posted at Speak Out For America. Go there for the latest on the Copenhagen shenanigans, and go HERE to tell Congress to OPPOSE any treaty in Copenhagen.]